Chrissie's Children (11 page)

He left the house quietly, and as he had entered it, by the back door and the back lane. No one saw him go. The rooms upstairs were empty and would be until his neighbours came home after the
pubs shut at ten.

He went on to the Pear Tree and the barman greeted him. ‘Aye, aye, Josh!’

Fannon answered, ‘Give us a pint,’ and as the man pulled it Fannon went on, ‘I’ve just left the Frigate. There’s a rare crowd in there tonight.’ That was
true.

The barman said, ‘Is there?’

‘Aye.’ Fannon pulled out the money from his raincoat pocket. He could spend the rents now. ‘Have one for yourself.’

‘Ta, Josh.’ The barman lifted his glass in salute and drank.

Fannon stood at the bar through the rest of the evening. He had time to think about what he had done on the spur of the moment and now he realised he had committed murder. If he was found out he
would be hanged. He sweated with fear and drank feverishly, talked to anyone who would listen. He was one of the last to leave the Pear Tree when it closed. Then he stood outside because he could
not go home, talking with a group of late leavers.

His neighbour found him there, the man hurrying up, panting, to lay a hand on his shoulder. ‘I’ve got some bad news for you, Josh.’

Fannon mourned in public and recovered his confidence as the death was accepted as an accident. He celebrated in private. The bank book was found by the coroner’s assistant, secreted in a
pocket on Meggie Fannon’s vest, and he returned it to Fannon. There were legal procedures to go through because Meggie left no will, but nor did she have any other kin and eventually Joshua
found himself a man of property with money in the bank.

He had not planned for this day as long as he had yearned for it, but he was not unprepared, either. He decided he would not be idle but would use his inheritance to build a bigger fortune by
uniting his capital with his experience. He would become a bookie. He would not stand on street corners to take the bets and risk being chased by the pollis. He would pay somebody else to do that
while he sat in comfort, checking the gambling slips and money as they were brought to him, and grew rich.

It was beyond his fearful imagining that he could be involved again in the plotting of murder – but in time, he would.

Sophie did not know that, nor did she know him, and slept peacefully in her bed.

Summer 1936

The Bavarian
bierkeller
was crowded, dimly lit and smoky. The four girls, all made up and trying to look older than their fifteen or sixteen years, had secured a table
near the little dance floor and the band. They had set out in a spirit of bravado, led by Sophie, who told them, ‘The old girl will be sound asleep by eleven.’ She was referring to
their headmistress. ‘She won’t know anything about it.’ So they had crept past her door, run down the stairs and out of the hotel. Now it was past midnight. They sipped beer and
tried to keep up their act as blasé young adults, tried also to ignore the ogling of the handsome young men at the tables around them.

Pamela Ogilvy collected most of the glances. She was tall, and her full figure and long, blonde hair attracted the men. She was aware of their glances, and while nervous of returning them she
blushed and basked in the admiration.

Sophie returned any of the looks that came her way, grinned and shook her head when one of the youths came to speak to her. Pamela asked, jealous, ‘What did he say?’ The other two
girls leaned forward to hear.

Sophie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Couldn’t hear with all the noise. Probably what they all say.’ Now the band had stopped playing and were leaving the little stage to take
a few minutes’ break. Sophie watched them go. Only a pianist was left.

Pamela suggested, provoking, ‘Why don’t you get up and sing, Sophie?’ The others laughed.

So did Sophie. ‘All right.’ Then she was on her feet and edging between the tables, crossing the floor and climbing on to the stage. Her painfully acquired German deserted her then,
but the little man at the piano knew more than enough English to understand what she wanted. He started to play the introduction and Sophie turned to face the crowd. Everyone in the
bierkeller
knew this was one of the English girls. And was she about to sing? There were cheers, jeers, catcalls and laughter.

Sophie stepped forward, and paused with her weight on one long leg, the other slightly bent, hands on hips. High heels added two inches to her height while the poor lighting carved hollows in
her cheeks, putting ten years on her age. She pitched her voice even lower than usual to match the song and the act – a take-off of Marlene Dietrich. And the crowd were watching, listening
to, another striking blonde. They were silent as she sang. When she finished they bawled their appreciation and hammered on the tables.

They easily persuaded her to sing again and she held them until the band returned, then sang all the way back to the hotel. Pamela Ogilvy said little.

Helen Diaz spent some of her summer holiday training with the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. She had joined at eleven as a cadet, with her mother’s urging (‘It
will help you when you go to be a nurse’). She worked enthusiastically and was proud of her white cap and grey dress, with the Service Star and single stripe on her sleeve that showed she had
proved efficient in First Aid and Home Nursing.

Some of her time was spent helping her mother, cooking and scrubbing. On washday she lit the boiler in the washhouse, pounded the washing in the tub with the poss-stick and heaved on the handle
of the mangle as her mother fed the clothes into the wooden rollers. If the weather was fine the clothes were pegged on the line in the yard. On a day of rain they were hung on the clothes horse
– and Paco Diaz cursed Helen as he shoved them aside because they hid the fire: ‘Fool! Take them away!’

Chrissie returned from two weeks’ walking in the Scottish Highlands with Jack and met Sarah Tennant in the kitchen of the Railway Hotel. ‘What did you do in your
holiday, Sarah?’

The girl looked up from the pile of potatoes she was peeling and smiled. ‘I spent nearly every day on the beach.’ She had walked across the bridge over the Wear and down to the sea
front, carrying a basket containing her towel, bathing costume and a packet of sandwiches. When it rained she stayed in her room and read. Every evening she reported to the club for her part-time
job of washing glasses. Sarah was living frugally and saving.

Chrissie asked, ‘Did you enjoy yourself?’

‘I had a lovely time,’ Sarah replied, and meant it.

Matt and Tom had been camping in France, wrangling and laughing, talking far into the night by their fire. Sarah would pass both of them with smiles now if she met them in the
hotel when they came to see their mother, but she was still shy. To them she was just a rather skinny girl who worked in the kitchen, deserving their courtesy and respect but having no common
interest.

When Tom went back to work he was in overalls because he would be spending a year working on the ship itself rather than in the office. Like many of the other men, he took with him his
‘bait’, sandwiches for his midday meal, prepared by his landlady and wrapped in a red and white spotted handkerchief. His can with its wire handle, and lid that served as a cup, held
tea leaves, sugar and a dollop of condensed milk, ready for wetting.

Jack told Chrissie proudly, ‘I hear he is doing very well.’

Then there was Matt. He had received a School Leaving Certificate, albeit not a good one, but had not found a job. Chrissie pressed, ‘I think we ought to give him one more year.’

‘He doesn’t want to go back to school,’ Jack pointed out, ‘and there’s a doubt as to whether they would take him. The Head suggested as much when you saw him,
remember?’

Chrissie agreed, but insisted, ‘His reports said he had a talent for art.’

Jack qualified that: ‘He likes sketching.’

‘Well, then, there is a good art school in the town, so why not send him there for a year? He might develop a real interest.’

Jack said unhappily, ‘I doubt it. I would hope so, but I doubt it.’

Chrissie wanted more time for this boy of hers, hoping he would find his way eventually, but she, too, was uncertain.

They put it to Matt, his sandy hair tousled and black oil streaked across his brow. The three of them sat in the spacious sitting-room one evening, with its pictures of Ballantyne ships, while
Sophie was upstairs in her room with Helen Diaz, playing records.

Jack said, ‘We’ll give you a year at art school to see if you have the talent or interest to make a career in that line. But in August next year you’ll be eighteen. If you
haven’t made up your mind what you want out of life by then, you go to work in the yard. I’m not supporting you after that.’

Chrissie hated the ultimatum but accepted it, remembering how she had to work as a young girl. She urged Matt, ‘Whatever you really want to do, we’ll back you.’ Jack had not
meant to go that far – he liked to know what he was getting into before he committed himself – but he grunted agreement.

Matt was silent for a moment, on the edge of revolt, but he told himself he could only argue against, he could not argue for anything, and he did not want another row. He said, ‘Well,
that’s fair, I suppose.’

He went off for a walk in the dusk and found Sophie walking down to the tram stop with Helen Diaz. He told Sophie the verdict, omitting to acknowledge Helen in his abstraction.

Sophie said, ‘You’re lucky to get the year. Some fathers would have taken you straight into the yard whether you liked it or not.’

Matt grumbled, ‘I can’t see me being an artist for the rest of my life.’

Helen, annoyed at being ignored, said, ‘There are plenty of young chaps around this town that would jump at the chance of a year at art school – or a job at Ballantyne’s
yard.’

Matt blinked at her, startled, then snapped, ‘I don’t see that it’s any of your business.’

Helen was red faced and angry, but her tram came clanking and rumbling at that moment. She climbed up into its lit interior and was driven away, wishing she had slapped his face.

Later that week Pamela Ogilvy sought out Sophie at school to tell her, ‘I was talking to Matt last night . . .’ She paused to gauge the effect of that.

Sophie knew Matt had ‘bumped into’ Pamela: he had told her. Sophie suspected it had been no accident and that Pamela had arranged it. Now she only smiled and said, ‘I talk to
him all the time.’

Needled, Pamela said, ‘Don’t you think he should be going into his father’s yard instead of taking this art course?’

Helen Diaz was standing by, and before Sophie could answer, she snapped, ‘What has it got to do with you? It’s his life.’

Pamela was startled into silence for a moment but then recovered to say primly, ‘It’s my business because I don’t want to see him waste his time messing about with little
pictures when he could be following a career. He’s a gentleman’s son – but you wouldn’t know anything about their standards.’

Helen flinched as if struck and Sophie shoved in front of her. She told Pamela, ‘You’re a stuck-up cow,’ then she grabbed Helen’s arm and hurried her away.

On a fine summer’s afternoon Lizzie Diaz walked down Church Street on her way home, a basket of shopping on her arm. In the warmth of the summer she just wore an old
cardigan over a thin cotton dress. As soon as she got home she would put on her pinny to keep the dress clean. The streets on her right around Society Lane, narrow and cobbled, were being
demolished. The cramped little houses, huddled together in rows, were empty, their former tenants moved to the new estates being built far away on the outskirts of the town. Lizzie saw the workmen
knocking down a house a hundred yards or more away, saw also the children playing in and out of the empty houses close by. But her mind was on her own child, Helen.

She was well content with the girl, who was gaining good reports at the grammar school and was set on following the course her mother had advised. Lizzie was sure that one day her daughter would
be a nurse, a sister, maybe even a matron. It was a fine career, respected in the community. If she had not married Paco . . . And Paco was the trouble. To him his son, Juan – though the
boy’s friends all called him John – was the most important person in the family after himself. Juan came first in his father’s thoughts and always had, to the almost total
exclusion of his daughter. Lizzie flinched as a child shrieked and then laughed somewhere in among the old buildings. She wished those bairns wouldn’t play in there.

Paco Diaz treated Helen as little better than a servant for him and his son, as he had treated Lizzie; and she, meek, gentle and loving had accepted the situation for herself. However, now she
sensed danger ahead because Helen had a mind of her own and was becoming rebellious. The girl had not defied her father – yet – but she had complained to her mother about the work
heaped on the pair of them while Juan did nothing in the house. Lizzie worried over it, wanted to stand up for her daughter but was afraid to confront the man she had married and loved.

The shriek came again, this time followed not by laughter but a sudden rumbling crash. Lizzie saw the children, dirty faces frightened and shocked, running out of a gap in the old walls. She
called to one of them, ‘What’s wrong?’

The boy stopped beside her and the others gathered around. He panted, ‘The ceiling fell in and Freddy Williams was underneath it.’

Lizzie whispered, ‘Oh, my God!’ then she ordered them, ‘Go and fetch the men. Tell them we might want an ambulance. Run, now!’ They did, racing down the road towards the
workmen.

Lizzie ran too, into the gap from which they had come, stumbling over the litter of rubble – stones, brick and lumps of rotten timber. She could see where the ceiling had come down because
a pall of dust still hung in the air inside the shell of one house. The side walls still stood, holding up the roof, but the front and back had collapsed and what had been the ceiling of the
ground-floor room, and the floor of the room above, had fallen in. There was a pile of debris almost as high as Lizzie, great chunks of plaster still adhering to the laths it had been spread on,
with broken rafters poking out at odd angles. And somewhere under it all was little Freddy Williams.